Passion for festivals and fun drove ‘Doppler Don’

Don Snider 1953-2012

Folk Fest production manager Don Snider died Nov. 12, 2012 after a battle with cancer.

You might say Don Snider was destined to work as the production manager for the Edmonton Folk Music Festival.

In the early ’70s he lived in Cloverdale, blocks away from what became the festival’s site — Gallagher Park. He worked as a teacher’s aide/backstage manager in the theatre program at Victoria High School. He took part in Outward Bound, where he learned to live off the land and adapt to changing weather and terrain.

Snider joined the Folk Fest in 1991. For the next 21 years, he shepherded the growth of the festival — setting up and tearing down stages, fences, and tents with the help of hundreds of volunteers. He worked with Gallagher Park’s neighbours, troubleshooting problems, and kept a close eye on the weather with his radar gear, earning the nickname of “Doppler Don.” As an Aug. 11 baby — born 1953 in Calgary — he celebrated a few birthdays on the site; he was serenaded by volunteers and fans at this year’s edition.

Snider died Nov. 12 at 59 after a two-year battle with cancer. He leaves behind his wife, Linda Brenneman-Snider, two daughters, two step-sons, and six grandchildren.

About 600 people attended a celebration of Snider’s life on Nov. 17, sharing stories and listening to saxophone player Dave Babcock, at Polish Hall. (More than 1,100 attended a living memorial at the Winspear Centre last year.)

Snider was diagnosed with lung cancer in 2010, but he treated the disease like a challenge to test the limits of his abilities, not a death sentence. Earlier this year, he completed 21 dives off the coast of Belize.

“Don lived to the very end believing in the promise of a new day, whatever shape that took,” writes Brenneman-Snider in an email.

“Our last trip was to Maui in June 2012 where he went on an extreme helicopter ride ... with no doors, dropping over 3,000-foot cliffs and flying into gorges to have a look at 1,000-foot waterfalls — what a blast! So was he. I’ll miss him madly!”

The couple met in the hallway at the Ortona Armoury, where the Folk Fest’s main office is. She was the manager of food services, he was just starting his gig at the festival.

Five years later, on May 18, 1996, they married in the yard of their Riverdale duplex. The two, both on their second marriages, became a formidable production team, also working on the Arctic Winter Games, First Night Festival, Street Performers Festival and the Blues Festival.

Away from the backstage bustle, the couple travelled around the world, trying to outdo each other at fishing, camping, diving, and savouring their children and grandchildren.

“He delighted in our backyard, garden and flowers,” writes Brenneman-Snider. “He planted pumpkins and cared for them lovingly as they took over the entire garden. Our grandchildren would follow him around as he explained how compost worked or what each flower’s name was. He treated young and old with respect, and listened to their stories with interest.”

He was also a loyal friend, says Dianne Unger, who conducts an Edmonton choir known as the Richard Eaton Swingers.

She met Snider when both were students at Victoria Composite High School in the early ’70s. They were part of a group of a dozen or so self-described misfits in the theatre program — building sets for plays such as Moliere’s The Imaginary Invalid — and all of them remain close to this day. After graduation, Snider worked as a teacher’s aide/backstage manager at the school for a few years.

Around the same time, Snider lived in a house in Cloverdale with his older brother, Gordon. “They were always forever taking in strays — young men and women,” says Unger. “There was always a place for you to crash, there was always food in the fridge as long as you pitched in. A lot of us took advantage of that. Don was a very accepting person, just not prejudiced against anything or anyone. You know, very much the peace, love, hippie movement. Don had long hair way down his back.”

As a free spirit, Snider was prone to the occasional impetuous act. He streaked through the hallways of Vic. After a trip to Europe, where he met a bunch of artists, he started a company, Poster Art International. A subsequent jaunt to Mexico inspired him to sell silver and turquoise jewelry. He talked about wanting to make $1 million before he was 50.

“He also sold vitamins,” says Unger. “Donald was forever wheeling and dealing. He was always selling something, there was always a way that he was going to make this $1 million. That didn’t happen, but he certainly had $1 million’s worth of friends.”

David Anderson, executive director of the Calgary International Children’s Festival, is one of these friends. He went to junior high school with Snider, and they became inseparable in their late teens. They played chess. They drank far too much Turkish coffee. They survived Outward Bound. They camped on the west coast, where they paddled a 60-foot cedar log to a little island and stumbled upon two French-Canadian female nudists. Anderson wanted to stay, Snider convinced him to leave — if only because his girlfriend was waiting for him on the other side of the water.

In the late ’80s, the two men shared a house together, dubbed the Gentlemen’s Club, in Calgary.

“Each of us had our own talents,” says Anderson. “I liked to cook. Donald liked to work in the garden. Our house was always filled with music — racks and racks of LPs. We had great parties there.”

Terry Wickham lived in the Gentlemen’s Club, too. He booked shows at the Calgary Centre for the Performing Arts, while Snider was one of the main technicians. In 1989, Wickham was hired by the Edmonton Folk Music Festival. Two years later, he hired his former roomie.

Wickham says Snider loved to talk, paid close attention to details — “He’d fix your collar before you’d go out on stage” — and kept working until about a week before he died, discussing some of the festival’s upcoming site upgrades.

One of the Folk Fest’s $150,000 endowment funds is in Snider’s name and the festival is working on other ways to honour him.

“He was passionate, he was unflappable ... very calm, even in bad weather,” says Wickham. “He was unique. The kind of loyalty that he inspired on the Folk Festival and First Night crew, he was legendary. He was as good a production manager and friend as you could ask for. He was a sweetheart.”